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End the time zone confusion

Posted on November 26, 2008, 6:06pm

In years to come historians will reflect on Australia’s current five time zones as another example of our failure to look beyond state parochialism to the national interest — much like the border customs posts of colonial days and the various railway gauges.

State boundaries don’t provide the best geographic tool for designating time zones.

A better approach would be to have the whole country east of Port Augusta on one time zone. The area west of Port Augusta to about Kalgoorlie should be offset one hour and the west coast should be two hours behind the east.

That’s impractical given political reality and communities of interest which inevitably build around state capitals, but a variation of it is possible.

The South Australian Government is currently considering an extension of daylight saving to maintain consistency with the eastern states.

Daylight saving should really just operate in the summer months from December 1 to February 28, but while Victoria and New South Wales continue to extend the dates there is a strong argument for South Australia to follow.

Business SA has submitted that South Australia should adopt eastern time permanently. Premier Mike Rann has previously ruled this out, sensitive to concerns on the west coast.

The biggest beneficiaries of a change would be the South East and Riverland, where many cross-border business and sporting links exist with Victoria.

A separate local time zone could be implemented for the Eyre Peninsula, as currently exists at Eucla.

It makes sense. A referendum should be held with the next state election to let the people decide.

MICHAEL GOREY

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Comments

One Response to “End the time zone confusion”

  1. Free on April 3rd, 2009 12:02 pm 1

    Actually it doesn’t make sense.

    In Mount Gambier the Eastern states are only half an hour difference. that’s nothing to worry about.

    One state=one timezone. DUH.